Started to work on the project again after a lengthy break.
In the previous post, there was a list of popular screen sharing tools to investigate. At first I thought of analyzing the tools by one proper run, so I was to have a complete list of all aspects to investigate before starting the process. This seemed no to be a great idea and I have decided to break the process in parts and investigate in more than one run.
Having the tools investigation in parts would allow me to target fewer tools and be able to do a more detailed investigation. This way I can choose tools that have different characteristics such as free, open source, web-based, replicated and centralized. Would be looking at strong points of each tool.
Part 1 of the investigation would include:
- Whether it is free or proprietary
- Open Source
- Web-based or Window based
- Architecture; Centralized, Replicated or Hybrid
- Signaling Protocols
- Media Protocols
- Remote Control; whether tools allows for participant can input mouse and keyboard strokes
- Share specific application
- Change presenter; whether tools allows presenter to be changes during session
- Live cursor
Some more may be added in time. Features such establishing signaling and media protocols would require packet sniffing tool such as Wireshark.
In part 2 I would be investigation things such as network latency tolerance, bandwidth consumptions, network connection lost and synchronizing recovery.
ADDITIONAL NOTE: This classification of tools here is done as per features and functionalities provided by these tools. See update of this list in later post and also a broader discussion of other classifications in post Analysis Framework ’11. See also ADDITIONAL NOTE onto this post for added classifications. There is also a paper I have written for SATNEC 2011 conference on classification of application sharing tools which would provide more clear understanding. As per part 2, I have done some test and have some noting of this in post Testing Framework ’11. In a later post I will discuss more on testing performance as noted in post Judgment of Expected Application Sharing Performance based on Protocol Used ’11.
